


On “Moon” and “Sea”

by bikeaesthetic



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-07
Updated: 2019-02-07
Packaged: 2019-10-24 03:39:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17696948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bikeaesthetic/pseuds/bikeaesthetic
Summary: gon and killua reunite, birdwatch, go swimming. part of a longer series by me and my friends maddie and amelia. partially inspired in some parts by gilgamesh.





	On “Moon” and “Sea”

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mm01](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mm01/gifts).



> my tumblr is @bufocrat, i post about hxh and a variety of other things. shoutout to my beloved maddie for encouraging me always. stay tuned i guess

mito has a dream: 

the sun is setting and as it sets it is in no hurry: it walks and shuffles and leaps across the sky and mito is scared of a night divorced of yellow. she calls to the sun and it does not even look over it’s shining shoulder: it does not pause to dive past the horizon. suddenly it is unknowable. mito detests the sun and its antics. 

the moon sits down beside her. mito makes the moon a meal.

mito says to the moon: the sun is dead.

the moon says: that can’t be so.

mito says, after a pause: my dear moon i can’t lie to you nor can i stand to watch you chase the sun. i see the light of it on your cheeks.

the moon says: was the sun ever the sun? truly? 

mito looks down at her hands, clasped together like a chain. the moon leaves too, but the moon looks back. the moon returns.

the moon says: i learned the gravity of my arms and head.

mito says: for whom?

the moon says: the ocean moves me. i move the ocean. it is a relationship most pleasing.

mito makes another meal for the moon. they sit down and drink tea and listen to the crickets.

*

You are not twelve anymore. Neither is he. 

“A couple years ago someone planted catnip in their garden and forgot about it. It’s the same as mint, it grows everywhere, and fast. Now it’s all over the forest, here look at it.” He brings it to his nose, near his lips, sniffs it. Brings it to yours. You inhale, with caution, eyes on his and then instead on the half moon slivers of his nails. Stained green. 

“Whale Island is different since the last time Killua visited,” he says. You haven’t noticed; for you it’s the same. You played in the streams, felt the stones hard beneath your feet, but really it was him. Him. 

He’s different. You’re different. The moon is in a different phase; waxing, fresh from the darkness of the new moon. But still the lunar light is partial, his features peeking out from the wine darkness in soft puzzle segments. Less baby fat, more round cheekbones, his upturned nose more gracefully finding its way into his brow ridge. 

*

Killua is walking side by side with Gon. They make their way out of Mito’s garden, into the inky woods. They make their way through the woods, feet making just the faintest whisper of sound as they rustle through undergrowth. They are like animals, or shadows. A filament of something tracing a familiar path; Killua is not as sure in his footsteps as Gon is, who has made this trail his own for several months during his newest stay at Whale Island.

This path is different from the one they followed the last time Killua was here. At first, everything felt the same; the harbor, Mito’s garden, the smell of linens and drying herbs in the house. But the clothes on the clothesline shift in a nighttime breeze, and they are roomier than those he saw last time. His room had books for government exams lying open on a desk. When Killua talks to Gon, he looks down, and Gon looks up, and his pupils are like round marbles in a bright white dish. 

Killua feels like a cat brushed against the grain of its fur. There is some way to reverse it. He isn’t sure of what it is.

“I discovered a new plant here. It only grows beneath the ground, and has a huge root system. It feeds off of other plants all over the island.” Gon says.

“Isn’t that bad?” Killua asks. Gon is walking ahead of him. His eyes are trained on the foliage before him. 

“I thought so at first,” says Gon, pausing for a moment. Killua quickly stops, then takes a step back, feeling too close to Gon’s broader shoulders. “But I disconnected the roots around this bush over here, do you see it?” 

Killua looks around. Follows the line arcing from Gon’s pointed index finger, to the bush that is slumped over as though weary. It looks gray, defeated, huddled into itself. There are purpled flowers at its base, fallen from where they once adorned the green plant.

“When I did that the bush died. I think the big plant beneath the ground helps the other plants somehow, but I don’t know how yet.” Gon says. “I don’t know how I missed the roots before. They were so obvious when I came back, like they were waiting for me to find them.” 

The moon is winking at them through the trees.

“I wonder if that plant is on any of the other islands,” says Killua. 

“I didn’t even think of that,” says Gon.

“Of course you didn’t, idiot,” is Killua’s quick retort. “You were probably too busy checking to see if you could eat it.” 

“You can eat it. It’s just really gross.” Gon replies.

“Like how gross?” asks Killua.

“Super gross,” Gon says, dragging the u out. “Like eating burnt octopus and grass.” Gon wrinkles his nose in disgust. Killua laughs.

“I can’t believe you ate it.” Killua says, laughing through his words.

“What if it ended up being really tasty though and I didn’t even try it?” Gon asks.

Killua shakes his head. “So you just pull every little thing out of the ground and try to eat it?”

“No,” Gon says. Killua looks down at him. “Maybe. Sometimes. Not if I know it’s poisonous.” 

They sink into the same velvety silence of before. The whites of their eyes flashing, minnows and their tails swimming side to side and up and down, communing and pulling and pushing. They are magnets. They are polar. 

*

The moon says: in this phase i am a mere fraction of my whole. in this phase i am still the moon and my eyes are still bright like stones in a stream. in this phase i am entirely me and entirely different but the sea still sways with me. the dance is like this: one step forward one step back one to the left one to the right and a clockwise spin. 

killua says: gon the moon and the sea are dancing.

and gon says: so they are.

and killua says: do we join them?

and gon looks in killuas eyes and nods, sees the full moon in them even though there is but a sliver in the sky, and privately he thinks that they’ve always been with them: the moon and the sea. they are one and the same and killua’s skin has always smelled like salt.

this is simply a logical return: they, the moon, the sea, have always made sense.

this was always meant to be.

*

“What type of birds are those?” Killua asks. On the bleached white cliffs of the seas, there are nests protruding like pockmarks from the cliff’s side. Nestled within them are spotted brown and white eggs, that from a distance should be indistinguishable from the debris of the carefully constructed nests. Killua spots them anyways, his trained eyes easily picking apart the evolved shades from the reeds and such that from the nests.

Around the nests are brilliantly dark birds, the barest light catching the deep blue hidden in their near black feathers.

They make graceful arcs between cliffside and sea, shooting into the water like raindrops and joining the sea like liquid before emerging again, fully formed, reborn, the blue of their feathers shining like beacons in the night. Killua watches, fascinated, the birds glowing green and blue, made more brilliant for the dim light of the moon. 

“They’re called lightning bug gulls. Below the surface there’s an algae that catches on their feathers and when it’s exposed to their body heat it glows.” Gon explains.

“Why didn’t I see this last time I came?” Killua asks. He lays near the edge of the cliff, his arms bent and fingers curling around the edge, his stomach against the grass beneath him and his head hanging over, watching the birds, the wind carding loose fingers through his hair. 

“A different season. Every time of the year the island changes,” Gon says. “So now you get to see an entirely new Whale Island.” There is a note of implication in Gon’s voice, Killua just nearly catches it, and holds it in his palm like a pearl.

“It’s cool,” Killua responds, and he and Gon watch for several moments, their eyes reflecting the birds. 

A soft silence passes, growing prickly, hazier at the edges. Killua focuses more, picking out the nestled forms of eggs hidden among the cliff’s jagged edges. They might be as young as the moon, the both in nascent phases. 

“Killua,” Gon says, the name on his lips more of a test than anything. Like he is remembering the weight of his vocal cords.

“What?” Killua replies, a contrived brusqueness in his voice. 

“Killua I missed you. So much.” Gon remembers so many nights as he lay in bed, his longing taking a shape, the shape of a person, of Killua. It hurt more than scrapes from falling down as he climbed trees, or the strain on his eyes and head from studying. It was more central and more like a bruise. 

“Why do you get so…. so like this when we’re here?” Killua mumbles, his face and chest burning. He remembers a night not unlike this one, when him and Gon sat beneath the stars and Gon confessed his friendly feelings so easily, in a way that Killua could hardly comprehend then. Killua doesn’t feel much closer to being able to match that now, either. He doesn’t feel like he is a worthy vessel of the emotion that Gon is expressing, and he wants to hide that by laughing and telling him to shut up. 

Killua chances a look at Gon, who hasn’t responded to Killua’s half-hearted complaint. Instead, he is gazing at Killua and his eyes have become pleading. Killua’s jaw quivers and he recognizes, in Gon’s eyes, a yearning, an askance, gravely familiar. 

Killua feels distinctly that Gon needs him, and tells himself that it is not because Killua will follow him to their deaths, but because Gon wants to be near him. To laugh uproariously together when Killua makes a funny face or Gon dangles a fat worm in his face. This he knows, but still does not feel. 

But Gon is different from Killua. Killua’s want is a different language and his tongue is entirely separate. He spends so much time translating, one desperation to another, heartstrings tangled to form a terse quip. Gon’s eyes are dark like a still clear pool. Killua is scared to acquiesce to them. And even more scared of what will happen if he does not. 

Killua nods, his eyes closed. When he opens them, Gon’s eyes are dimmer. He knows this is not the right answer. Not quite. 

Killua has become used to not being shaped the way he should be. 

Gon stands up.

Killua watches as Gon raises his arms toward the night sky, as though in worship. Or as though he is reaching for something he will never grab a hold of. Gon clenches his fists and then releases his fingers again, stretching as tall as he can. Killua is dazed; he doesn’t know why Gon is doing this. 

Gon looks down at him with a smile. Killua  
doesn’t understand it but Gon’s face is bright and cheerful, opposite to before, when he searched Killua’s face balefully. 

Killua looks at the grass depression left by Gon’s body. 

“There’s a path down the cliffside that we can take to see the birds better. They don’t care about me going down by their nests as long as I’m not too close. I think they’ll understand that you’re not going to hurt them either.” In Gon’s words Killua feels some sort of resignation, but also of hope. 

As Gon and him pick their way down the cliff, they shift and turn and wedge their bodies, defiantly upright as they descend. 

The birds are larger than Killua had thought; their beaks look like bent knives and their wings are all angled. The better to slice in and out of the water with fish caught in them.

The eggs, too, are large. Gon and him take a moment to look at the nests and count the eggs, noticing the nests with two eggs, and one, and three, and none.

“Are the babies cute when they hatch?” asks Killua.

“They’re brown little puffs until their black adult feathers come in. When they shed their baby fluff it’s like a snowstorm over here, all the feathers falling down and being caught in the wind.” Gon replies. 

“Whale Island is weird. That’s probably why you’re like this.” Killua jokes, his hand finding a place, his foot following beneath it, threading his body through the night air like a needle.

“Why I’m like what?” Gon asks.

“I don’t know. Just, you know, like how you are,” Killua attempts to elaborate. 

“I don’t know.” Gon replies, and Killua doesn’t know what to say back. He is scared that in this moment he is unable to justify his place beside Gon, his taking up of space. He changes the subject:

“Will the eggs hatch soon? Alluka would probably like to see them. Nanika too.” 

Gon smiles: Killua doesn’t see it.

“Probably. We can have a picnic down in the beach and watch the babies learn how to fly.” Gon pauses momentarily. The path they are taking seems fit for nimble cats or goats, and here, there is barely any space to move about. Gon, though, and Killua too, are far surer in the placement of their feet than any animal, having long learned the tricky art of balance. 

He looks around, spotting, at last, a ledge for them to sit on. Gon shuffles his feet, hunches his shoulders for a moment, situates himself upon it. He pats the stone beside him, beckoning Killua to sit down, to watch the lights of the algae and the birds and their bodies making luminescent arcs. 

They become wrapped up in the moment, and the stifling silence, and the unsaid words. Killua sits on his hands.

A gull shoots past them, beak clamped around a wriggling silver fish, it’s eyes non-emotive. 

“Did you ever go to school?” asks Gon, his voice slipping into the quiet, not quite shattering it. But something close.

“No,” Killua replies.

“Me neither. I read books with Mito-san, and she taught me things like fractions and pronouns.” Gon says. 

“Is it hard to study for the government exams then?” Killua asks.

“Sometimes it’s really easy, when I get to learn about the horse-tribes of the mainland, or about why trees are able to grow so tall. But sometimes I get really restless and can’t read, and Mito-san sighs and hands me a packed lunch and I spend a few hours, or days, in the woods. That’s how I found this spot.” Gon’s voice is like a bell.

“That sounds kind of fun,” Killua says, and wonders if he should enroll Alluka in some type of school, if that’s something necessary for her. He does not think about whether or not that should be his concern, the raising of his little sister. He does not think that there should be other responsible people, that adolescence and half-parenting half-siblinghood is not entirely compatible.

“I wonder why it is that Mito-san is so concerned for you getting your government exams done, when really the Hunter License is all you need to make money and do things.” Killua wonders. 

Gon thinks that maybe Mito is telling him: it’s okay to come back home, that there is a world beyond the card. Or maybe she is stalling, grasping at whatever she can to keep him with her. And Gon loves her for it.

“I know! But Mito-san doesn’t care. She says that we might have a better world if Hunters had to know about the government and money and people.” 

Killua snorts and extracts his hands from beneath him to pick at his nails.

“Maybe she’s on to something.”

“Maybe,” Gon says, and he smiles at Killua, and Killua smiles back.

Killua swings his feet back and forth, and, too late, caught up in the scent of the sea and the sound of bird’s wings slicing through the air, he notices his shoe slipping off his foot. Gon and him watch it fall, twisting, the laces tangling and un-tangling, like two long braids.

“Oh,” he says, and looks up at Gon.

Gon who is standing up now, who is stepping out of his loose green pajama pants, and pulling his shirt off neatly.

Killua doesn’t know how to react until Gon begins to fold his clothes neatly, stacking them on top of eachother.

“What the hell are you doing?” Killua asks, and he doesn’t get a reply, just a grin.

And ah, this is that feeling again, of being so wrapped up in another person that you swear you can hear the barest whisper of their thoughts even when the only noise is the absent swishing of water against rock.

“Aren’t those shoes your special Predator high tops?” asks Gon. “We can’t let them sink like that.” And he dives in, the line of his body entering the water to the indignant squawk of a bird near to them, the fish in its mouth dropped, wriggling, only to be caught once again in a swift turn of the bird’s body.

“Stupid,” says Killua. “Stupid, stupid, stupid,” he repeats as he shakes his other shoe off, and his shirt, and his pants. “These shoes aren’t even Predator. They’re Prada.” 

When he looks down, he sees Gon’s body glowing in the ocean, his feet swinging side to side as he propels himself downwards, each movement sending millions of algae shining through the water.

Killua does not think.

He jumps.

He jumps and the water is icy and his chest feels tight for a moment before everything erupts into light and he almost forgets what he’s doing. He looks down at his hands and they seem to be glowing from within.

And then he dives and he feels the pressure of it in his nose, and he sees Gon’s body, and he reaches out. Killua forgets about the shoe, about the apology from so long ago, about Gon’s hair growing long and long and longer.

Killua only sees his friend’s figure in the dark ocean, surrounded by a billion shining particles, strange and supernatural, and he is overcome by the fear that Gon will not stop diving, that he will swim until his lungs are empty of air, and only Killua will be there to breathe oxygen back into his best friend. Killua beats his feet furiously, feeling the limits of the water around him like a second skin. He knows, he knows how it will end, the algae dissipating, their bodies no longer glowing, and Killua will pull Gon up and up through the endless miles of ocean water, until the gulls descend upon the tops of their heads, thinking the two of them to be the stupidest fish alive. 

And then Gon turns, and holds out the shoe by the laces. 

The shoe is not lit up by the algae, but it’s white sides reflect the glow. Killua’s breath bubbles up the side of his face and obscures his vision for a moment, as he relaxes. 

Gon smiles, swimming to Killua’s side, and the both of them let themselves rise, assisting the natural pull of their bodies upwards by making broad strokes by their hands towards the surface. 

When they surface, Gon is laughing, and Killua can’t help but join him too. 

Killua smacks Gon’s head, a little more lightly than he probably should have, and Gon rubs the spot.

“What was that for?” Gon asks, but it’s a game, he already knows the answer, and when Killua opens his mouth he is happy for the rhythm of them, of their lips, of their legs and hands treading water in exact unison together. 

“Because it’s too damn cold for this,” answers Killua. 

“But I got your shoe for you!” Gon shoots back, and throws the offending article at Killua, the shoe splashing as it bounces off of Killua’s cheek and back into the water.

“You idiot,” Killua responds.

They swim back to shore, tossing the shoe back and forth, procrastinating the moment when they will have to scale the cliff to get to their clothes. 

They finally do climb, their fingers slick and slipping on handholds. Killua has tied the shoe’s laces so it hangs like a medallion from his neck and hangs over his shoulder, thumping against his back with every movement. 

As they climb, sometimes Killua is in front, sometimes Gon is. They’re not yet dry, and the algae that clings still to their bodies glows. 

In the night Killua’s eyes find Gon’s shape. He is glowing like the birds. 

Killua looks down.

He is glowing, like the birds. 

They reach the ledge, and Killua unlaces the shoe and sets it down. 

Killua notices: a zit on Gon’s back, that blends in with the spotted fields of freckles on his shoulders. He notices the contraction and shuffle of muscles as Gon shrugs on his t-shirt and it sticks to his wet chest.

Dry clothing on wet bodies seem fair more ill fitting than when the both were dry, and Killua’s arms are nearly stuck in the sleeves of his hoodie as he tries to force his hands through them. He was not aware until now, of how much cloth there is.

“I missed you. Also.” Killua says. He is overwhelmed by the cool sea breeze, and the haunting fear that Gon will turn and walk back into the ocean and never come back. 

Gon looks at Killua and his eyes are lit like the algae. Killua looks back, the moment, the words, slung over the two of them lazily. They don’t need to say anything. Gon shakes his hair out like a dog and buries his head against Killua’s chest. Killua laughs and swats at him, scolds him for dirtying his shirt. 

*

mito asks: why are you two wet, like twin seals, to sneak in late at night and leave trailing water-steps atop the kitchen floor?

the wind chime hanging beside the still open door sings its twinkling song, asking the same as her: why are you two wet, like bubbling river algae, to sneak in late at night and leave trailing water-steps atop the kitchen floor?

killua feels distinctly that both voices are maternal, of heritage, in always conversation with gon. 

gon says: we didn’t want to wake you mito-san

mito says: it will take many more years for me to forgot the sound of your feet and hands making their way into my house (and soon killua’s mountain cat footsteps will be so recorded as yours, gon) (this she doesn’t say, but feels) 

killua lingers like an apparition beside gon, the water dripping from his hair making its soft cries so occasionally. he is unsure when it is appropriate to appear. 

mito says: the both of you, in the bath. now, before my house stinks of salt and fish. killua you give me your clothes to wash. gon’s pajamas are too small for you.

killua is not given a choice; mito forces him into being.

the house says to killua: you know, you were always welcome here. the floorboards are creaking their hellos as you walk up the stairs and the faucet squeaks our hello as you turn it.

killua says: shut up (thank you) (this he doesn’t say, but feels)


End file.
